第64章

How frequent it is that men on their road to ruin feel elation such as this! A man signs away moiety of his substance; nay, that were nothing; but a moiety of the substance of his children; he puts his pen to the paper that ruins him and them; but in doing so he frees himself from a source of immediate little pestering, stinging troubles: and, therefore, feels as though fortune has been almost kind to him.

The doctor felt angry with himself for what he had done when he saw how easily the squire adapted himself to this new loan. 'It will make Scatcherd's claim upon you very heavy,' said he.

Mr Gresham at once read all that was passing through the doctor's mind. 'Well, what else can I do?' said he. 'You wouldn't have me allow my daughter to lose this match for the sake of a few thousand pounds? It will be well at any rate to have one of them settled. Look at that letter from Moffat.'

The doctor took the letter and read it. It was a long, wordy, ill-written rigmarole, in which that amorous gentleman spoke with much rapture of his love and devotion for Miss Gresham; but at the same time declared, and most positively swore, that the adverse cruelty of his circumstances was such, that it would not allow him to stand up like a man at the hymeneal altar until six thousand pounds hard cash had been paid down at his banker's.

'It may be all right,' said the squire; 'but in my time gentlemen were not used to write such letters as that to each other.'

The doctor shrugged his shoulders. He did not know how far he would be justified in saying much, even to his friend the squire, in dispraise of his future son-in-law.

'I told him that he should have the money; and one would have thought that that would have been enough for him. Well: I suppose Augusta likes him. I suppose she wishes the match; otherwise, I would give him such an answer to that letter as would startle him a little.'

'What settlement is he to make?' said Thorne.

'Oh, that's satisfactory enough; couldn't be more so; a thousand a year and the house at Wimbledon for her; that's all very well. But such a lie, you know, Thorne. He's rolling in money, and yet he talks of this beggarly sum as though he couldn't possibly stir without it.'

'If I might venture to speak my mind,' said Thorne.

'Well?' said the squire, looking at him earnestly.

'I should be inclined to say that Mr Moffat wants to cry off, himself.'

'Oh, impossible; quite impossible. In the first place, he was so very anxious for the match. In the next place, it is such a great thing for him. And then, he would never dare; you see, he is dependent on the De Courcys for his seat.'

'But suppose he loses his seat?'

'But there is not much fear of that, I think. Scatcherd may be a very fine fellow, but I think they'll hardly return him at Barchester.'

'I don't understand much about it,' said Thorne; 'but such things do happen.'

'And you believe that this man absolutely wants to get off the match; absolutely thinks of playing such a trick as that on my daughter;--on me?'

'I don't say he intends to do it; but it looks to me as though he were making a door for himself, or trying to make a door: if so, your having the money will stop him there.'

'But, Thorne, don't you think he loves the girl? If I thought not--'

The doctor was silent for a moment, and then he said, 'I am not a love-making man myself, but I think that if I were much in love with a young lady, I should not write such a letter as that to her father.'

'By heavens! If I thought so,' said the squire--'but, Thorne, we can't judge of those fellows as one does of gentlemen; they are so used to making money, and seeing money made, that they have an eye to business in everything.'

'Perhaps so, perhaps so,' muttered the doctor, showing evidently that he still doubted the warmth of Mr Moffat's affection.

'The match was none of my making, and I cannot interfere now to break it off: it will give her a good position in the world; for, after all, money goes a great way, and it is something to be in Parliament. I can only hope she likes him. I do truly hope she likes him;' and the squire also showed by the tone of his voice that, though he might hope that his daughter was in love with her intended husband, he hardly conceived it to be possible that she should be so.

And what was the truth of the matter? Miss Gresham was no more in love with Mr Moffat than you are--oh, sweet, young, blooming beauty! Not a whit more; not, at least, in your sense of the word, nor in mine. She had by no means resolved within her heart that of all the men whom she had ever seen, or ever could see, he was far away the nicest and the best. That is what you will do when you are in love, if you be good for anything. She had no longing to sit near to him--the nearer the better; she had no thought of his taste and his choice when she bought her ribbons and bonnets; she had not indescribable desire that all her female friends should be ever talking to her about him. When she wrote to him, she did not copy her letters again and again, so that she might be, as it were, ever speaking to him; she took no special pride in herself because he had chosen her to be his life's partner. In point of fact, she did not care one straw about him.

And yet she thought she loved him; was, indeed, quite confident that she did so; told her mother that she was sure Gustavus would wish this, she knew Gustavus would like that, and so on; but as for Gustavus himself, she did not care one chip about him.

She was in love with her match just as farmers are in love with wheat and eighty shillings a quarter; or shareholders--innocent gudgeons--with seven and half per cent interest on their paid up capital. Eighty shillings a quarter, and seven and half per cent interest, such were the returns which she had been taught to look for in exchange for her young heart; and, having obtained them, or being thus about to obtain them, why should not her young heart be satisfied? Had she not sat herself down obediently at the feet of her lady Gamaliel, and should she not be rewarded? Yes, indeed, she shall be rewarded.